Late night on July 14, Marcela Dominguez woke up in the backseat of a friend’s car only to find herself in Tijuana. She was scared, her palms were sweaty, and her heart raced as she found herself overwhelmed with panic.

“A lot of things were going through my mind. Of course, I knew I was in big trouble and I didn’t know what was going to happen to me,” Dominguez said. “My life was pretty much going upside down.”

Dominguez, a recipient of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, program was mistakenly taken across the border by a friend who had offered to drive her home.

After a night out in Little Italy, a friend who lives in Tijuana offered to give Dominguez a ride to Chula Vista. However, with Dominguez asleep in the backseat, the friend drove straight to Mexico.

A short while after crossing into Mexico, Dominguez woke up and the pair immediately attempted to return to the United States. According to Dominguez, a border official told her that if she could provide a picture of her work authorization card given to DACA recipients he would let her through.

However, despite being able to contact her sister through text, Dominguez did not receive the picture her sister sent.

With that, Dominguez, 32, was arrested on July 15 by border officials at the San Ysidro Port of Entry and spent nearly two months in the Otay Mesa Detention Center before being released on Friday, Sept.14.

“I missed summer in there,” she said as she stepped out of her attorney’s office in the afternoon. “It’s getting cold now.”

For DACA recipients, travel outside of the U.S. without approved travel documentation means the “automatic termination of deferred action,” a policy that has been in place since the Obama-era program started.

While in detention, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) mailed a letter to Dominguez’s home notifying her that her DACA and employment authorization were “terminated automatically as of the date of (her) departure from the United States.”

Dominguez, originally from Mexico, was brought to the U.S. as an infant and joined the DACA program in 2013, which allowed her to receive temporary protection from deportation and a work permit.

Dominguez graduated from Point Loma High School and although she had dreams of pursuing a higher education, she believed it was more important to help her parents pay for her sisters’ education.

“I always had a dream to go to school,” Dominguez said, she pauses because her voice breaks. “But my parents needed help. So after high school I didn’t continue college and then I helped out my parents with money.”

Dominguez is a manager of a business in Coronado and although she has been placed on leave of absence, her employer has been understanding of the situation.

“I told him, now it’s your decision. I understand that you need someone to take care of the place but if you need to make that decision, if you need to hire someone else, I understand,” Dominguez said. “And he said, ‘that has never gone through our minds and you know you’ll always have a job here.’”

Kirsten Zittlau, Dominguez’s attorney, said they have submitted three letters to USCIS to request that it reinstate her DACA status. They have not received a response.

“It’s just wading though all this bureaucracy,” Zittlau said. “Meanwhile she’s actively in deportation proceedings, and thankfully she’s in the non-detained docket now but she’s in removal proceedings.”

Dulce Garcia, an immigration attorney, said cases like Dominguez’s are difficult because once DACA is revoked, the individual is considered “deportable.” Garcia, who is not involved in Dominguez’s case, is currently working with a DACA recipient from San Diego who was “involuntarily” taken out of the U.S. and has also had his grant revoked. The problem, according to Garcia, is that the decision to grant, revoke or reinstate DACA is completely discretionary.

“DACA recipients don’t necessarily have other forms of relief, otherwise we would have pursued them already,” Garcia said.

Earlier this year, in a similar incident, DACA recipient and UC San Diego student Orr Yakobi made national news when he was detained at the San Ysidro Port of Entry and placed in the custody of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement after unintentionally leaving the U.S. In January, Yakobi and his roommate Ryan Hakim were leaving Las Americas Premium Outlets in San Ysidro when Hakim made a wrong turn that forced them to cross the border into Mexico.

According to Lauren Mack, ICE public affairs officer in San Diego, U.S. Customs and Border Protection is responsible in determining whether information provided by an individual with DACA at a port of entry is valid to admit them back into the U.S. However, if the individual is not found credible, the person is placed into immigration proceedings and into ICE custody.

Maria Elena Upson, a public affairs officer with USCIS, confirmed in an email that the DACA grant itself is revoked by USCIS. Upson wrote that the agency does not keep track of the number of recipients who have lost their DACA grant as a result of accidentally leaving the U.S.

But while Yakobi’s case gained national attention through the help of media stories and elected officials who spoke in support of his case, the stories of people such as Dominguez and Garcia’s client have gone under the radar.

According to CBP public affairs press officers in border states like New Mexico, Arizona and Texas, they were not aware of cases like the ones reported in San Diego at their ports of entry. Garcia, who is also a DACA recipient, said she has never heard of cases like those of Dominguez or her client but it could mean that, “maybe other people in other states are just not reporting it or covering the stories.”

For now, Dominguez is hopeful that her DACA status will be reinstated but she added that the experience of spending nine days in “la hielera” (the freezer, a term detainees have used to describe the border holding cell) and nearly two months at Otay Mesa, has changed her life.

According to Dominguez, out of the nine days she was at “la hielera,” she was only allowed to shower three times and had to wear the same clothing. She also alleged that because she could not shower every day, she contracted lice and had to ask the officers for treatment.

“It’s crazy how they have you in there, they just throw you in that room like an animal,” Dominguez said. She added that the women were not given shampoo, soap or deodorant, and that “it was just maxi pads and water.”

According a CBP national standards document, “reasonable efforts” to provide showers, shampoo and clean towels to detainees who are approaching 72 hours in detention will be made, and according to the standards, “detainees should generally not be held for longer than 72 hours in CBP hold rooms or holding facilities.”

After she was transferred to Otay Mesa, Dominguez said she remembers crying so much every day that her head hurt and, at times, she wondered if she would lose her mind.

Dominguez is currently waiting to see if USCIS will reinstate her DACA and work authorization.

“It has always been helping out in the family so (my sisters) can have an education,” Dominguez said. “I know that I wasn’t able to actually go to college and everything but I want them to make something in life. Work is 100 percent the thing that scares me of not having, because I won’t be able to support my family.”